ISG corporate deal with BIW | BIW Technologies

ISG THE OCCUPANCY BUSINESS FOCUSES ON 'WHOLE LIFE' INFORMATION WITH BIW

16 November 2001

ISG the occupancy business, the support services group, has formed a strategic partnership with BIW Technologies (BIW), the UK market leader in collaboration systems. Already using BIW's information technology on a £33 million project for a City of London law firm, ISG now plans to integrate the system into the project delivery processes of its Interior, Exterior and Eurica businesses, for both construction and occupancy support. ISG currently manages work valued at over £530 million, including over £120 million of construction management activity.

BIW's supply chain management service, BIW Information Channel, is already used extensively in the UK construction industry with over 9900 users in nearly 1500 companies working on some 440 projects worth a total of £3.7bn. Clients include Sainsbury's, Capital One Bank, Manchester Airport, Ikea, the Welsh Development Agency, the Wellcome Trust and Asda.

BIW Information Channel makes project data available to every team member through unique, project-specific websites. Users can create, and have access to, information including drawings, text documents, photographs, comments, team member details and even virtual reality renditions, all viewed and sent securely over the internet. The system also supports decision-making after the construction phase, providing information for managers responsible for a building's operation and maintenance.

Robert Horvath, ISG's group managing director, said: "ISG's e-strategy is about enabling us to integrate the communication power of the web into our services, and BIW is the ideal technology partner to support the information needs of our project teams and our customers With BIW, our Interior and Exterior teams will be able to deliver clients' buildings more efficiently and by creatively harnessing the data Eurica management will deliver added value to our clients in occupation."

BIW Technologies chief executive Colin Smith said: "ISG prides itself on building effective, rewarding and long-standing relationships with its customers - something we aim for ourselves as a client-focused company. Rather than simply focussing on the pre-build and build phases of construction projects, BIW's collaboration technology has been developed to support the whole life-cycle of a built asset, and is an ideal complement to ISG's services."

More information from:

Paul Wilkinson, BIW Technologies - 0845 1300 800 (mobile 07788 445920)
Mathew Giles, ISG the occupancy business: 020 7392 5283

Editor's Note

Listed on the AIM Stock Exchange in June 1998, and with a turnover (in the year ended 30 June 2001) of £538 million, ISG the occupancy business offers a range of outsourced business and occupancy support services to property owners and occupiers throughout the UK and Europe.
By providing consulting, creation, management and operation services, ISG enables its customers to focus on their core business. Through seven core skills across the property lifecycle, the group is able to:

create facilities (through Exterior and Interior)
manage and operate them (through Eurica and IFS)
look after the people who use and invest in them (through ISGC and Walker Packman)

Services are offered individually, in combination (or packages) and in total through Corporate PFI (CPFI) solutions.
Project collaboration services from BIW Technologies (www.biwtech.com) were first employed in 1998 on UK construction projects for Sainsbury. The customer list now includes Capital One Bank, housebuilder Crest Nicholson, Marks & Spencer, Manchester Airport, the Ministry of Defence, Ikea, the Welsh Development Agency, Asda, the Wellcome Trust, Kajima and developer Garbe. As the technology is adopted by each client's supply chain, growth of the BIW Information Channel user base has accelerated, with 6206 users being added in the 12 months up to 30 September 2001, compared with 2018 added in the previous 12 months.
BIW Information Channel is a sophisticated web-based supply chain integration technology, originally designed specifically for construction projects. Each client is provided with a unique, project-specific website created around a knowledge database. Using this, all data can be made available to every project team member - from the earliest concepts and specification, through detailed design, buildability studies, pre-fabrication, construction, maintenance, operation and improvement to the eventual demolition or dismantling of the facility.